Socio-Economics is the study of relationship between economic activities and social life. It is a multidisciplinary components involving theories and modules from sociology and economics for human dignity among others. However, socioeconomists focuses on social impacts and political activities that affects economic changes, or causes that impact a society. The Goal to Socio/economic study is to bring about improvement on socioeconomic development environment…Give Opinion or Discuss

WASHINGTON, Apr 8 2013 (IPS) - The World Bank
will be placing stronger emphasis on issues of land tenure and socially and
environmentally sustainable agricultural investing, it announced Monday.

The bank, one of the world’s largest development lenders, also formally
reiterated its concern over the large-scale corporate “land grabbing” that has
affected vast swathes of Africa in recent years.

Without these guidelines, we’d be left with anarchy.

“The World Bank Group shares these concerns about the risks associated with
large-scale land acquisitions,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a
statement from the bank’s Washington headquarters Monday.

“Securing access to land is critical for millions of poor people. Modern,
efficient, and transparent policies on land rights are vital to reducing poverty
and promoting growth, agriculture production, better nutrition and sustainable
development.”

Following on decades in which agricultural sectors were almost completely
bypassed by international investors – including bilateral donors and
multilateral lenders such as the World Bank – recent years have seen a surge of
interest across all types of investors and development institutions.

Related IPS Articles

On Monday, Kim noted that the World Bank, too, had stepped up its
agriculture-related investments, but warned that “additional efforts must be
made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights – and to empower
civil society to hold governments accountable.”

Ahead of a four-day annual World Bank conference on land and poverty here
this week, the institution stated that it expected the global population to grow
by two billion by 2050, requiring an expansion of global agricultural production
of 70 percent.

While the institution is reiterating longstanding calls for significant new
public and private investment in both small-scale and large agricultural
operations, it has warned that “investment alone will not be enough” to attain
these levels.

Rather, citing spiking food and fuel prices coupled with the looming
uncertainties of climate change, the bank is urging the adoption of stronger
national and international standards on investments and land rights as a way of
helping farmers across the globe raise yields.

“Usable land is in short supply, and there are too many instances of
speculators and unscrupulous investors exploiting smallholder farmers, herders
and others who lack the power to stand up for their rights,” the bank notes.
“This is particularly true in countries with weak land governance systems.”

As such, the bank will now be strengthening efforts aimed at improving land
governance, protecting the rights of landowners, and promoting policies “that
recognise all forms of land tenure and help women achieve equal treatment in
obtaining land rights”.

Growing global discussion

Particularly following the rise in both global food-price volatility and
demand for biofuels over the past half-decade, agricultural land has become a
lucrative commodity for international investors, who have focused particularly
on Africa.

According to 2011 research by the bank, some 60 million hectares of land in
developing countries were purchased or leased by private sector investors in
2009 alone, a process that has continued. In many cases, local civil society
organisations have warned that these transactions are being carried out with
government complicity and without following international standards on
stakeholder inclusion.

“There’s been a tendency recently towards governments giving large plots of
land to international investors for free or at concessional rates, thinking that
doing so will fast-track development,” Nicholas Minot, a senior research fellow
with the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think
tank, told IPS recently.

“To some degree there’s logic to that, but there is a huge question as to
whether that land was owned by the government or whether it was previously
occupied by small-scale farmers without titles. Establishing secure land rights
for people in rural areas is a massive but critical issue.”

Organisers say that this week’s World Bank conference on land and poverty –
the 14th – is the largest they’ve ever put on, and includes participation by
government officials from several countries. Bank officials also say that the
conference’s focus, titled “Moving towards transparent land governance”, is
indicative of a new global discussion on the issue.

“This year we have dozens of sessions on issues of land governance,
transparency and implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines, which wouldn’t have
been as prominent four years ago,” Jorge Munoz, a land tenure adviser for the
World Bank, told IPS.

“This is not a new subject for the bank, but it has become much more
prominent globally – though clearly some countries are much more interested in
increasing transparency for improving land governance than others.”

As part of the bank’s scaling-up on the issue, Munoz points to the
institution’s rollout of a new tool with which governments are able to get a
snapshot analysis of their current land tenure and related laws. Called the Land
Governance Assessment Framework, Munoz says 33 countries have now started to
use it.

In addition, the bank is now assisting in implementing new international
guidance, approved in May under the auspices of the U.N. Food and Agricultural
Organisation (FAO), called the Voluntary Guidelines
for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the
Context of National Food Security.

According to USAID, the Untied States’ central foreign assistance agency, at
least 22 countries have now requested technical assistance on implementing the
Voluntary Guidelines. Although the project is still in a pilot phase, a “zero
draft” of the guidelines is to be released within the coming month.

“Voluntary regulations don’t always work, of course, but in this case these
guidelines may be the only way to solve the problem of ensuring that small-scale
farmers don’t get abused and are able to access lands they may have used for
generations,” Danielle Nierenberg, co-founder of Food Tank, a Washington think
tank, told IPS.

“Without these guidelines, we’d be left with anarchy. Still, governments and
consumers now need to take the initiative to push corporations to take this
seriously.”

In recent years, some civil society groups have questioned the bank’s own
part in facilitating large-scale land acquisitions (including here
and here),
particularly that of its private sector arm, the International Finance
Corporation (IFC). Yet Munoz says much of this criticism has overstated the
institution’s role, which he suggests has focused less on financing than on
offering technical assistance on reforms.

“There is a major global problem with land-grabbing,” says Munoz. “The bank’s
role is, essentially, to be leaders in assisting countries in improving land
governance and improving the behaviour of private investors.”

World Bank Urges African Agriculture Rethink

A woman weeds a sesame crop field in South Sudan's Eastern Equatoria state. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

WASHINGTON, Mar 6 2013 (IPS) - The World Bank is urging African governments to retool their agriculture policies, particularly to include a far greater focus on agribusiness as a critical driver of future development.
The bank is now projecting that African agriculture could triple in economic size in coming years, topping a trillion dollars by 2030, powered by massively increasing domestic and international demand. With Africa by some counts the world’s fastest-growing economy, middle-class demand for food is set to quadruple by 2030, to more than 400 billion dollars.
“After years of neglect, agriculture is once again seizing the attention of African governments, business leaders, communities, and development donors, as a powerful driver of the continent’s relentless growth,” Makhtar Diop, the World Bank’s vice-president for Africa, wrote in the forward to the new report, released Monday by the bank’s Washington headquarters.

Related IPS Articles

“[W]e cannot overstate the importance of agriculture … Africa now stands at a crossroads, from which it can take concrete steps to take on a much bigger role in both the regional and global markets or continue to lose competitiveness – missing a major opportunity for structural transformation.”
While African farmers currently contribute the single largest component to the continent’s annual economic growth, their sector has for decades been seen as failing to reach its full potential.
“On almost any metric – yields, level of exports, contribution to gross domestic product – African agriculture does underperform,” Nicholas Minot, a senior research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told IPS.
“A big part is because this agriculture is mostly being carried out by small-scale farmers who don’t have the cash to buy fertiliser and other inputs, even where it’s available.”
As a result of this and the continent’s relatively poor soils, Africa exports several key commodities that only grow well in the tropics, including coffee, tea and cocoa. But for most grains and many food crops, its countries are either barely self-sufficient or forced to import.
According to the World Bank, crop yields in Africa are just half the averages in Asia and Latin America. Meanwhile, the report notes, “Africa’s agricultural growth derives largely from opening new land to agriculture, with negative consequences for biodiversity, forests and soils.”Scaling up and down
Even as agriculture is again receiving belated consideration from African governments and donors, “their attention should extend to agribusiness,” the report urges. “The attention focused on production agriculture will not achieve its developmental goals in isolation from agribusinesses, ranging from small and medium enterprises to multinational companies.”
“Agribusiness” refers to the full spectrum of the sector leading to and following agricultural production, including the processes that get raw farm food products into the hands of consumers and money back to farmers. Already, agriculture and agribusiness together make up nearly half of Africa’s gross domestic product.
“Absolutely, if the continent wants to become more self-sufficient, farmers need to be recognised as businessmen and businesswomen and entrepreneurs with innovative approaches to marketing crops and improving food security,” Danielle Nierenberg, the co-founder of Food Tank, a Washington think tank, told IPS.
But Nierenberg also warns against focusing too much attention on creating jobs and incomes through crops for export.
“Greater investment is needed to increase the production and consumption of vegetables, leguminous crops and perennial crops to increase both food security and incomes,” she says.
Indigenous crops, too, though often looked down upon by many middle-class consumers, tend to be both rich in micronutrients and resistant to disease, flooding and drought. As climate change takes a more significant hold on Africa, these crops will become increasingly important and economically valuable.
Further, Nierenberg notes that any greater state or donor attention placed on agriculture and agribusiness will need to maintain – or strengthen – a priority on small-scale farmers, particularly women.
“For Africa or any other developing country to succeed, there needs to be more focus on smallholders, family farms and woman farmers,” she says. “While agrodealers or small- and medium-sized seed and other input suppliers are growing across the continent, few of them are women.”
Likewise, notes IFPRI’s Minot, Africa already hosts significant agribusiness activities, albeit at very small scale. In line with the World Bank’s emphasis on the need for a full spectrum of agribusiness sizes, Minot warns against African governments rushing to invest solely in mass-scale processing capability.
“For now, that’s fine,” he says. “These tiny mills are relatively efficient, low cost and there’s no reason any government should be subsidising large mills to come replace them.”‘Key challenge’
Maintaining a priority on the small scale has already proven difficult for many African countries. The continent currently has more than half of the world’s unused agricultural lands, which over the past half-decade has led to a massive increase in attention from international investors.
“Private sector interest in African agribusiness is unprecedented,” the bank notes. “The past decade has witnessed an upsurge in interest from the private sector in African agriculture and agribusiness, including interest from foreign investors and investment funds.”
In recent years, the World Bank itself has come in for civil society criticism (including here and here) for the role it has reportedly played in promoting large-scale “land grabs” by foreign investors keen on purchasing swathes of African agricultural lands on which to grow monocultured crops for export.
The bank has repeatedly denied such allegations, and the new report devotes significant space to the need for strong environmental and social safeguards and land security systems.
“The challenge is to harness investors’ interest in ways that generate jobs, provide opportunities for smallholders, respect the rights of local communities, and protect the environment,” the report notes.
“Going forward, a key challenge is to curb speculative land investments or acquisitions that take advantage of weak institutions in African countries or disregard principles of responsible agricultural investment.”
In counteracting the potential for land-grabbing, IFPRI’s Minot says that one of the most important priorities is to establish secure land rights for rural families and communities.
“But that’s a very long, tedious and technical process,” he says. “Today, it’s a process that is indeed going forward, but it’s certainly not rushing forward.”

‘Money Wasted Without Policy’

BRUSSELS, Apr 11 2013 (IPS) - As European Commission leaders make calls for EU countries to raise their spending on development aid for the world’s poor, groups working in underdeveloped states have warned that without more effective aid policies and networks, extra financing may be wasted.Speaking as the European Report on Development (ERD) – an independent report prepared by NGOs and commissioned by EU member states – was launched Tuesday, European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs told journalists: “I was shocked and disappointed when it became apparent that there had been a trend of developing nations reducing their aid spending in recent years.
“This trend must be reversed, we must do more and raise our development aid financing.”
But assembled speakers at the launch event in Brussels were quick to point out that rich nations must look very carefully at the wider development agenda if they are to get “value for money” from their aid contributions.
Dr Debapriya Battacharya, Chair of Southern Voice on Post-MDG International Development Goals – a network of more than 40 think tanks from South Asia, Africa and Latin America, told IPS: “Just giving money to poorer countries and telling them to meet some arbitrary targets is a ‘lose-lose’ situation for all involved.
“The donor states’ taxpayers do not get value for money if nothing is changed and it is no good for the developing countries if they get money but can’t use it to their own requirements.”
The report, among other things, outlines a role for the EU in a future global development aid framework post 2015 when a replacement for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals is hoped to be introduced.
A recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed spending of official development assistance in its member states had fallen by 4 percent last year in real terms, following a 2 percent drop in 2011.
In some individual EU states the falls have been dramatic. In Spain, overseas aid funding is at its lowest level in 22 years.
There has been widespread criticism of the fall, and European Commission (EC) officials speaking at the launch of the ERD made constant references to the need to reverse the trend.
NGOs which have been critical of governments cutting back on development aid to meet domestic austerity targets agreed that rich countries needed to up their aid spending.
But they said that simply increasing aid financing would not be enough.
Gerard Vives, European coordinator for the European NGO CONCORD’s ‘Beyond2015’ campaign, told IPS: “The European Union must champion a global framework that places people at its centre. This means focusing on human rights and accountability. The framework must be accompanied by robust accountability mechanisms at all appropriate levels so that people can hold their governments to account for commitments made.
“Emerging consensus on a framework that tackles poverty and sustainability together is important as these issues are inextricably linked.”
But leaders and NGOs from some of the world’s least developed countries say that rich countries’ approach to development aid, while ostensibly well-intentioned, can often be flawed.
They complain that there is a lack of understanding about the development needs of individual countries and that setting arbitrary targets or goals internationally is not always useful at a local level.
Battacharya told IPS: “Any global development aid framework must be aligned to national needs, although how that is to be done is a great challenge and something for which there is no easy answer.”
And there is a feeling among some groups that richer countries, including those in the EU, do not listen carefully enough to the voices of those in poorer nations about aid.
Battacharya told IPS: “This whole post-2015 debate is about a balance of power and there is a definite asymmetry of power in favour of the North, notably in terms of knowledge. There is an elaborate process of consultation going on but it does not necessarily produce critical knowledge.
“We need to make sure that voices are brought in from the South where we know from experience what has worked and what has not from the MDGs.”
However, the ERD does address some of these issues directly, making clear that any aid will be misspent unless it is used to help create ‘sustainable and inclusive’ development, including, among others, creating long-term job opportunities, addressing climate change and global financial transparency, inequality, lack of social inclusion and justice.
But some experts are unconvinced that this is the right approach to take and that it could in fact make it harder to raise development around the globe.
Jan Vandemoortele, a co-architect of the MDGs and now an independent author and lecturer, told IPS: “There is a misconception that the MDGs mismatched with national targets. But if you go to individual countries, you see that they have adapted the MDGs to their own targets, sometimes higher than the global targets, and sometimes lower, depending on their individual income.
“Not every country has to hit MDG targets for the world to fulfil the global target. If we all do our bit the global target is met.”
He added: “Now, everyone around the table wants their issue included in the new replacement for the MDGs. That cannot work. Someone has to make a decision to leave something out. You have to ask is the new framework about a means to a development end or about the ultimate end itself? I think it has to be about the ultimate end itself and issues like trade and finance are a means, not an end, and they should be left out.
“I am not confident that a new global framework will be found. It has become very politicised with so many governments using it to push national or regional agendas.”

Are African land grabs really water grabs?CNN Market Place

By Jennifer C Franco, Lyla Mehta and Gert Jan Veldwisch, Special to CNN

updated 12:19 PM EDT, Fri March 22, 2013

Women in Kenya's Tana River delta, where there have been tensions over land and water access.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Large-scale land deals in Africa can be seen as "water grabs, write three researchers

Taking land for development often has implications for for local people's water rights

Jennifer Franco, Lyla Mehta and Gert Jan Veldwisch ask: Who has the right to the water in a river?

Editor's note:Dr. Jennifer C Franco is coordinator of the Agrarian Justice program at the Transnational Institute, Netherlands, and an adjunct professor at the China Agricultural University in Beijing. Dr. Lyla Mehta is a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, UK and a Visiting Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Dr. Gert Jan Veldwisch is assistant professor at the Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University. Together they have edited a special issue of Water Alternatives on Water Grabbing.

(CNN) -- Millions of hectares of land have been acquired in the past few years across Africa by investors who are moving into large-scale agriculture to take advantage of potential windfall gains. Popularly these deals have become known as "land grabbing," but they could just as well have been framed as "water grabs."

The current global rush for agricultural land grew partly in response to increased global food prices since 2007. Global capital is finding its way to agricultural investments on the basis of expectations of high returns, either through increased production or through speculation on further rising land prices.

Dr. Jennifer C Franco

Dr. Lyla Mehta

Dr. Gert Jan Veldwisch. Photo courtesy pixed.nl

(There are serious socioal Justice questions)

Optimistic promises that such investment would also reinvigorate depressed rural economies, by virtue of employment creation and improved livelihoods, have proven to be vastly overstated, if not unfounded in many cases. But one of the untold stories of the global land grab is the quest to capture one of the most vital resources: water.

As land is grabbed and earmarked for development, this often has implications for the water nearby, for local people's land and water rights and environmental sustainability.

All around the world powerful actors (transnational as well as national) are pointing out that the lands in which they invest are "marginal" and "unproductive" lands. This has been shown to be untrue for many cases; either the land is already used by small-scale food producers, or is of prime quality and associated with good (potential) access to water.

In the Tana Delta for example, the Kenyan government marked the Tana river basin for development, designating the floodplain area as "unused" and the adjacent terraces as "empty dryland" with irrigation potential.

But this region has long been home to small peasant farmers, fishers and pastoralists from different ethnic groups, whose cooperative sharing of fragile land and water resources over the years has been possible because of delicately balanced customary use rights agreements amongst themselves.

In most countries where land deals are taking place it is no use having land without also having access to water.
Jennifer C Franco, Lyla Mehta and Gert Jan Veldwisch

The violence last year in the Kenya's Tana region demonstrates the perils -- and tragedy -- of ignoring more complex social realities that exist on the ground.

In most countries where land deals are taking place it is no use having land without also having access to water. Research published in a special issue of Water Alternatives has shown water to be one of the prime drivers of the global rush to acquire land. Despite this, many land deal contracts -- or the prior environmental assessments upon which they ought to be based -- do not explicitly mention water requirements, let alone quantify them.

The issue of water grabs is a particularly slippery one. Unlike land, water flows and moves from one place to another; its availability goes up and down, affected by the seasons, human use, or climate change; it can be visible on the surface and invisible underground. It can be a source of food, or disease and pollution. Rights, access and uses are complex and varied. Who has the right to the water in a river -- the people who live beside it in a given place, the farmers who depend on it for irrigation, or those upstream or downstream?

Water's elusive nature makes it a prime target. The boundaries between legality and illegality are often fuzzy, and questions of jurisdiction over water can be unclear. Grabbers often take advantage of this legal complexity. In Ghana, according to research by the International Water Management Institute, the separation of land and water rights created the space for water grabbing: pre-existing customary water rights were abolished and instead ownership, management and control of water were placed under authority of the state.

Similarly, water-quality impacts reach far beyond the place of pollution. A case in point is a large-scale land deal in the Iringa Region of Tanzania under a lease-agreement with the government. According to a paper published by Italian NGO Acra, fertilizers, pesticides and faeces of cattle led to the contamination of downstream drinking water sources serving a population of some 45,000 people.

Questions of jurisdiction over water can be unclear. Grabbers often take advantage of this legal complexity.
Jennifer C Franco, Lyla Mehta and Gert Jan Veldwisch

Proponents of large-scale land deals deploy powerful narratives of underutilized land and water resources that "require" investment to "unlock" their potential, or an abundance of water and land, ready to be woken up by commercial agriculture. But it is at least debatable if the targeted land and water resources are indeed unused or even underutilized.

The narratives of "unexploited resources" provide justification for governments to displace existing users of resources and the ways in which smallholder farmers use their water remain unrecognized some can create new scarcities for others.

The hidden aspects of water grabbing do not just make it a very "slippery" terrain, but also imply that large-scale land acquisitions all around Africa actually can be understood as "water grabbing." That we call this a process of grabbing does not mean that these deals are strictly illegal, but there are serious underlying social justice questions.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those ofJennifer C Franco, Lyla Mehta and Gert Jan Veldwisch.

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Land grabbing

Land grabbing is the contentious issue of large-scale land acquisitions: the buying or leasing of large pieces of land in developing countries, by domestic and transnational companies, governments, and individuals. While used broadly throughout history, land grabbing as used today primarily refers to large-scale land acquisitions following the 2007-2008 world food price crisis.[1] Obtaining water resources is usually critical to the land acquisitions, so it has also led to an associated trend of water grabbing. By prompting food security fears within the developed world and newfound economic opportunities for agricultural investors, the food price crisis caused a dramatic spike in large-scale agricultural investments, primarily foreign, in the Global South for the purposes of food and biofuels production. Initially hailed by investors and some developing countries as a new pathway towards agricultural development, investment in land has recently been criticized by a number of civil society, governmental, and multinational actors who argue that it has had negative impacts on local communities.

The term "land grabbing" is itself a controversial issue. Borras and others describe that "the phrase 'global land grab' has become a catch-all to describe and analyze the current explosion of large scale (trans)national commercial land transactions."[1] Meanwhile, Ruth Hall of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies notes that "the popular term 'land grabbing', while effective as activist terminology, obscures vast differences in the legality, structure, and outcomes of commercial land deals and deflects attention from the roles of domestic elites and governments as partners, intermediaries, and beneficiaries."[2]

Research managed by the Overseas Development Institute in January 2013 found that the size of the ‘global land grab’ may have been exaggerated, with limited data available, and the data that existing associated with NGOs with an interest in generating media attention around the issue. They found that the figures below provide a variety of estimates, all in the tens of millions of hectares.[3]

Most seem to arrive at a ballpark of 20-60 million hectares. Given that total global farmland takes up just over 4 billion hectares,[6] these acquisitions could equate to around 1 per cent of global farmland. However, in practice, land acquired may not have previously been used as farmland, it may be covered by forests, which also equate to about 4 billion hectares worldwide, so transnational land acquisitions may have a significant role in ongoing deforestation.[3]
The researchers thought that a sizeable number of deals remain questionable in terms of size and whether they have been finalised and implemented. The land database often relies on one or two media sources and may not track whether the investments take place, or whether the full quantity reported takes place. For example, a number of deals in the GRAIN database appear to have stalled including -

A suspended 320,000 hectare purchase by Chinese investors in Argentina.[3]

The researchers claim these are only those that have been checked, and already amount to nearly 10 per cent of the GRAIN database transnational land acquisitions. Deals are reported that use the estimate of the full extent of land that the firm expects to utilise. For example

Indian investment in Tanzania is reported at 300,000 hectares, currently operating on just 1,000 hectares

The researchers found that in terms of value of transnational land acquisitions, it is even harder to come across figures. Media reports usually just give information on the area and not on the value of the land transaction. Investment estimates, rather than the price of purchase are occasionally given [3]
They found a number of reports in land databases are not acquisitions but are instead long-term leases, where a fee is paid or a certain proportion of the produce goes to domestic markets.

An Indian investment in Ethiopia, where price per hectare ranged from $1.20 to $8 per hectare per year on 311,000 hectares

Indian investors paid $4 per hectare per year on 100,000 hectares.

While Prince Budr Bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia was reported to be paying $125,000 per year for 105,000 hectares in South Sudan, (less than $1 per year on a 25-year lease).

A South Korean investor in Peru was reported to be paying $0.80 per hectare.

[3]
Despite difficulty, one estimate of the value has been made for IFPRI’s 2009 estimate of 15 to 20 million hectares of farmland in development countries, which they calculated at being worth $20 billion-$30 billion.[7]
Researchers discovered global investment funds are reported to have sizeable funds available for transnational land investments.

One estimate suggests “$100 billion waiting to be invested by 120 investment groups” while already “Saudi Arabia has spent $800 million on overseas farms”.[8] In 2011, a farm consultancy HighQuest told Reuters “Private capital investment in farming in expected to more than double to around $5-$7 billion in the next couple of years from an estimated $2.5-$3 billion invested in the last couple of years”.[9]

There is significant uncertainty around the value of transnational land acquisitions, particularly given leasing arrangements. Given the quantity of land and the size of investment funds operating in the area, it is likely that the value will be in the tens of billions of dollars.[3]

Researchers made extensive use of the Land Portal’s Land Matrix, utilising a database of 49 billion hectares of land deals, shows that Asia is a big centre of activity with Indonesia and Malaysia counting for a quarter of international deals by hectares. India contributes a further 10 per cent of land deals. The majority of investment is in the production of palm oil and other biofuels.[3]
They determined that the Land Portal also reports investments made by investors within their home country and after stripping out these found only 26 million hectares of transnational land acquisitions which strips out a lot of the Asian investments. The largest destination countries include

[3]
They found the story seems to be biofuels expansion with exceptions in Sudan and Ethiopia, which sees a trend towards growth of food from Middle Eastern and Indian investors. Represented in the media as the norm they seem to be more the exception.[3]

Both the Land Portal and the GRAIN database show that the UK and the US are major players in transnational land acquisitions. This is agribusiness firms, as well as investment funds, investing mostly in sugar cane, jatropha or palm oil. This trend has clearly been driven by the biofuels targets in the EU and US, and greater vertical integration in agribusiness in general.[3]
The smaller trend is the picture of Middle Eastern investors or State-backed Chinese investments. While the UAE has done some significant deals by size, some driven by food deals, with Saudi Arabia a smaller number, this is not the dominant trend. While this aspect of ‘land grabs’ has gathered lots of media attention, it is not by any means a comprehensive story.[3]

Other estimates of the scope of land acquisition, published in September 2010 by the World Bank, showed that over 46 million ha in large-scale farmland acquisitions or negotiations were announced between October 2008 and August 2009 alone, with two-thirds of demanded land concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa.[10] Of the World Bank’s 464 examined acquisitions, only 203 included land area in their reports, implying that the actual total land covered could more than double the World Bank’s reported 46 million ha. The most recent estimate of the scale, based on evidence presented in April 2011 at an international conference convened by the Land Deal Politics Initiative, estimated the area of land deals at over 80 million ha.[11]
Of these deals, the median size is 40,000 ha, with one-quarter over 200,000 ha and one-quarter under 10,000 ha.[10] 37% of projects deal with food crops, 21% with cash crops, and 21% with biofuels.[10] This points to the vast diversity of investors and projects involved with land acquisitions: the land sizes, crop types, and investors involved vary wildly between agreements. Of these projects, 30% were still in an exploratory stage, with 70% approved but in varying stages of development. 18% had not started yet, 30% were in initial development stages, and 21% had started farming.[10] The strikingly low proportion of projects that had initiated farming signifies the difficulties inherent in large-scale agricultural production in the developing world.
Investment in land often takes the form of long-term leases, as opposed to outright purchases, of land. These leases often range between 25 and 99 years.[10] Such leases are usually undertaken between national or district governments and investors. Because the majority of land in Africa is categorized as “non-private" as a result of government policies on public land ownership and a lack of active titling, governments own or control most of the land that is available for purchase or lease.[12] Purchases are much less common than leases due to a number of countries’ constitutional bans on outright sales of land to foreigners.
The methods surrounding the negotiation, approval, and follow-up of contracts between investors and governments have attracted significant criticism for their opacity and complexity. The negotiation and approval processes have been closed in most cases, with little public disclosure both during and after the finalization of a deal. The approval process, in particular, can be cumbersome: It varies from approval by a simple district-level office to approval by multiple national-level government offices and is very subjective and discretionary.[10] In Ethiopia, companies must first obtain an investment license from the central government, identify appropriate land on the district level and negotiate with local leaders, then develop a contract with the regional investment office. Afterwards, the government will undertake a project feasibility study and capital verification process, and finally a lease agreement will be signed and land will be transferred to the investor.[13] In Tanzania, even though the Tanzania Investment Centre facilitates investments, an investor must obtain approval from the TIC, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Lands and Housing Development, and the Ministry of Environment, among which communication is oftentimes intermittent.[13]

The target locations of most land grabs lie in the Global South, with 70% of land grabs concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa.[citation needed] Other primary areas of note are in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
One common thread among governments has been the theme of development: Target governments tout the benefits of agricultural development, job creation, cash crop production, and infrastructure provision as drivers towards economic development and eventually modernization. Many companies have promised to build irrigation, roads, and in some cases hospitals and schools to carry out their investment projects. In return for a below-market-rate $10/ha annual payment for land, Saudi Star promised "to bring clinics, schools, better roads and electricity supplies to Gambella.”[14] Governments also count new job creation as a significant feature of land acquisitions.
The issue of agricultural development is a significant driving factor, within the larger umbrella of development, in target governments' agreement to investment by outsiders. The Ethiopian government's acceptance of cash crop-based land acquisitions reflects its belief that switching to cash crop production would be even more beneficial for food security than having local farmers produce crops by themselves.[15] Implicit in the characterization of African agriculture as "underdeveloped" is the rejection of local communities' traditional methods of harvesting as an inadequate form of food production.
On a smaller scale, some deals can be traced to a personal stake in the project or possibly due to corruption or rent-seeking. Given the ad hoc, decentralized, and unorganized approval processes across countries for such transactions, the potential for lapses in governance and openings for corruption are extremely high. In many countries, the World Bank has noted that investors are often better off learning how to navigate the bureaucracies and potentially pay off corrupt officers of governments rather than developing viable, sustainable business plans.[10]

Since 2010 Brazil enforces in a stricter way a long-existing law that limits the size of farmland properties foreigners may purchase, having halted a large part of projected foreign land purchases.[16]
In Argentina, as of September 2011, a projected law is discussed in parliament that would restrict the size of land foreign entities can acquire to 1000 hectare.[17]

Investors can be generally broken down into three types: agribusinesses, governments, and speculative investors. Governments and companies in Gulf States have been very prominent along with East Asian companies. Many European- and American-owned investment vehicles and agricultural producers have initiated investments as well. These actors have been motivated by a number of factors, including cheap land, potential for improving agricultural production, and rising food and biofuel prices. Building on these motivations, investments can be broken down into three main categories: food, biofuel, and speculative investment. Forestry also contributes to a significant amount of large-scale land acquisition.

Food-driven investments, which comprise roughly 37% of land investments worldwide, are undertaken primarily by two sets of actors: agribusinesses trying to expand their holdings and react to market incentives, and government-backed investments, especially from the Gulf states, as a result of fears surrounding national food security.[10]
Agricultural sector companies most often view investment in land as an opportunity to leverage their significant monetary resources and market access to take advantage of underused land, diversify their holdings, and vertically integrate their production systems. The World Bank identifies three areas in which multinational companies can leverage economies of scale: access to cheap international rather than domestic financial markets, risk-reducing diversification of holdings, and greater ability to address infrastructural roadblocks.[10] In the past few decades, multinationals have shied away from direct involvement in relatively unprofitable primary production, instead focusing on inputs and processing and distribution.[18] When the food price crisis hit, risk was transferred from primary production to the price-sensitive processing and distribution fields, and returns became concentrated in primary production. This has incentivized agribusinesses to vertically integrate to reduce supplier risk that has been heightened by the ongoing food price volatility.[13] These companies hold mixed attitudes towards food imports and exports: While some concentrate on food exports, others focus on domestic markets first.
While company-originated investments have originated from a wide range of countries, government-backed investments have originated primarily from the food-insecure Gulf States. Examples of such government-backed investments include the government of Qatar’s attempt to secure land in the Tana River Delta and the Saudi government's King Abdullah Initiative.[19][20] Additionally, sovereign wealth funds acting as the investments arms of governments have initiated a number of agreements in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since the population of the Gulf states is set to double from 30 million in 2000 to 60 million in 2030, their reliance on food imports is set to increase from the current level of 60% of consumption.[21] The director general of the Arab Organisation for Agricultural Development echoed the sentiment of many Gulf leaders in proclaiming, “the whole Arab World needs of cereal, sugar, fodder and other essential foodstuffs could be met by Sudan alone.”[13]

Biofuel production, currently comprising 21% of total land investments, has played a significant, if at times unclear, role. The use and popularity of biofuels has grown over the past decade, corresponding with rising oil prices and increased environmental awareness. The total area under biofuel crops more than doubled between 2004 and 2008, expanding to 36 million ha by 2008.[22] This rise in popularity culminated in EU Directive 2009/28EC in April 2009, which set 10% mandatory targets for renewable energy use, primarily biofuels, out of the total consumption of fuel for transport, by 2020.[23] Taken as a whole, the rise in biofuels popularity, while perhaps beneficial for the environment, sparked a chain reaction by making biofuels production a more attractive than food production and drawing land away from food to biofuel production.
The effect of the rise in popularity in biofuels was two-fold: first, demand for land for biofuel production became a primary driver of land sales in Sub-Saharan Africa; second, demand for biofuels production crowded out supply of traditional food crops worldwide. By crowding out food crops and forcing conversion of existing food-producing land to biofuels, biofuels production had a direct impact on the food supply/demand balance and consequently the food price crisis. One researcher from the IFPRI estimated that biofuels had accounted for 30 percent of the increase in weighted average grain prices.[24]

Large-scale investments in land since 2007 have been scrutinized by civil society organizations, researchers, and other organizations because of issues such as land insecurity, local consultation and compensation for land, displacement of local peoples, employment of local peoples, the process of negotiations between investors and governments, and the environmental consequences of large-scale agriculture. These issues have contributed to critics' characterization of much large-scale investment since 2007 as "land grabbing," irrespective of differences in the types of investments and the ultimate impact that investments have on local populations.[2]

One of the major issues is land tenure: In a 2003 study, the World Bank estimated that only between 2 and 10 percent of total land in Africa is formally tenured.[13] Much of the lack of private ownership is due to government ownership of land as a function of national policy, and also because of complicated procedures for registration of land and a perception by communities that customary systems are sufficient.[13] World Bank researchers have found that there existed a strong negative statistical link between land tenure recognition and prospective land acquisitions, with a smaller yet still significant relationship for implemented projects as well.[10] They concluded that “lower recognition of land rights increased a country’s attractiveness for land acquisition,” implying that companies have actively sought out areas with low land recognition rights for investment.[10]

While commonly required by law in many host countries, the consultation process between investors and local populations have been criticized for not adequately informing communities of their rights, negotiating powers, and entitlements within land transactions.[25]
Consultations have been found extremely problematic due to the fact that they oftentimes reach just village chiefs but neglect common villagers and disenfranchised groups. World Bank researchers noted that “a key finding from case studies is that communities were rarely aware of their rights and, even in cases where they were, lacked the ability to interact with investors or to explore ways to use their land more productively.”[10] When consultations were even conducted, they often did not produce written agreements and were found to be superficial, glossing over environmental and social issues.[10] In Ghana and elsewhere, chiefs often negotiated directly with investors without the input from other villagers, taking it upon themselves to sell common land or village land on their own.[10] Moreover, investors often had obtained approval for their projects before beginning consultations, and lacked any contractual obligation to carry out promises made to villagers.[10]
There is a knowledge gap between investors and local populations regarding the land acquisition process, the legal enforceability of promises made by investors, and other issues. The inability of villagers to see and study the laws and regulations around land sales severely deteriorates communities’ agency in consultations. When consultations do occur with communities, some take place in spans of only two to three months, casting doubt on whether such short time frames can be considered as adequate consultation for such large, wide-reaching, and impactful events.[19]
An additional concern with consultations is that women and underrepresented populations are often left outside during the process. Large-scale projects in Mozambique rarely included women in consultations and never presented official reports and documents for authorization by women.[26] This holds true when women are the primary workers on the land that is to be leased out to companies.[27] Meanwhile, pastoralists and internally displaced people were oftentimes intentionally excluded from negotiations, as investors tried to delegitimize their claims on land.[10] This led to a lack of awareness on the part of these vulnerable groups until lease agreements have already been signed to transfer land. This oversight in consultations further disenfranchises previously overlooked communities and worsens power inequities in local villages.

Another criticism of investment in land is the potential for large-scale displacement and of local peoples without adequate compensation, in either land or money. These displacements often result in resettlement in marginal lands, loss of livelihoods especially in the case of pastoralists, gender-specific erosion of social networks.[citation needed] Villagers were most often compensated as according to national guidelines for loss of land, loss of improvements over time on the land, and sometimes future harvests.[13] However, compensation guidelines vary significantly between countries and depending on the types of projects undertaken. One study by the IIED concluded that guidelines for compensation given to displaced villagers in Ethiopia and Ghana was insufficient to restore livelihoods lost through dislocation.[13]
There aret a number of issues with the process of relocating locals to other areas where land is less fertile. In the process of relocation, often changed or lost are historical methods of farming, existing social ties, sources of income, and livelihoods. This holds drastic impacts especially in the case of women, who rely greatly upon such informal relationships.[28]

When not displaced, the conversion of local farmers into laborers holds numerous negative consequences for local populations. Most deals are based on the eventual formation of plantation-style farming, whereupon the investing company will own the land and employ locals as laborers in large-scale agricultural plots. The number of jobs created varies greatly dependent on commodity type and style of farming planned.[10] In spite of this volatility, guarantees of job creation are rarely, if ever, addressed in contracts. This fact, combined with the intrinsic incentives towards mechanization in plantation-style production, can lead to much lower employment than originally planned for. When employed, locals are often paid little: In investments by Karuturi Global in Ethiopia, workers are paid on average under $2 a day, with a minimum wage of 8 birr, or $0.48, per day, both of which are under the World Bank poverty limit of $2 per day.[29]

In addition to the lack of coordination between ministries, there is a wide knowledge gap between government-level offices and investors, leading to a rushed and superficial investment review. Many government agencies initially overwhelmed by the deluge of investment proposals failed to properly screen out non-viable proposals.[10] Due to the knowledge gaps between government agencies and investors, “in most countries it is implicitly presumed that investors will have the right incentive and be the best qualified to assess economic viability,” leading to a lack of reporting requirements or monitoring arrangements, key information on land uses and value of the investment, and checks on economic viability.[10] The Sudanese government has been noted as having paid minimal attention to existing land rights and neglecting to conduct any economic analysis on potential projects.[10] In addition, many countries, including Cambodia, Congo, Sudan, and Ghana, have neglected to catalog and file even general geographical descriptions of land allocation boundaries.[10]
One addition to many contracts between governments and investors is a Stabilisation Clause, which insulates investors from the effect of changed governmental regulations. Such clauses severely restrict the government’s ability to change any regulations that would have a negative economic impact on the investment.[13] While advantageous for businesses, these stabilization clauses would severely hinder the ability of governments to address possible social and/or environmental concerns that become apparent after the beginning of the project.

Land investment has been criticized for its implicit endorsement of large-scale industrial agriculture, which relies heavily on fertilizers, machinery and inputs, over smallholder agriculture.[citation needed] As foreign investors begin to develop the land, they will, for the most part, start a shift towards such large-scale agriculture to improve upon existing “unproductive” agricultural methods. The threat of the conversion of much of Africa’s land to such large-scale agriculture has provoked a severe pushback from many civil society organizations such as GRAIN, La Via Campesina, and other lobbyists for small-scale agriculture.[30]
Foreign investors, through large-scale agriculture, increase the effectiveness of underused resources of land, labor, and water, while further providing additional market connections, large-scale infrastructure development, and provision of seeds, fertilizers, and technology. Proposed increases in production quantity, as touted by investors and hosts, are exemplified by Ethiopia’s Abera Deressa, who claims that “foreign investors should help boost agricultural output by as much as 40%” throughout Ethiopia.[14] However, large-scale mechanized agricultural production often entails the use of fertilizers and intensive farming techniques that have been criticized by numerous civil society actors as extremely ecologically detrimental and environmentally harmful over the long run.[31] Over time, such intensive farming threatens to degrade the quality of topsoil and damage local waterways and ecosystems. As such, civil society actors have widely accused land investors for promoting “not agricultural development, much less rural development, but simply agribusiness development.”[31] This trend towards large-scale agriculture that overrides local knowledge and sustainable local farming runs directly counter to the recent IAASTD report, backed by the FAO, UNDP, World Bank, and others, that to increase food security over the long term, sustainable peasant agriculture must be encouraged and supported.[32]

Foreign investment in land has been criticized by many civil society actors and individuals as a new realization of neocolonialism, signifying a renewed economic imperialism of developed over developing nations.[33] Critics have pointed to the acquisitions of large tracts of land for economic profit, with little perceived benefit for local populations or target nations as a whole, as a renewal of the economically exploitative practices of the colonial period.

[edit]Laws and Regulations Concerning Reporting of Foreign Investment in Land

A 2013 report found no available literature giving recommendations for how the UK could change its laws and regulations to require UK companies investing in land in developing countries to report relevant data.[34]
The researcher looks at a literature review by Global Witness, the Oakland Institute, and the International Land Coalition from 2012 [35] which states that there is little sustained focus on the extraterritorial obligations of states over overseas business enterprises.[34]
The researcher found most available literature and policy on transparency in land investment focusing on: • Facilitating community engagement in planning decisions and enhancing community rights • Upgrading obligations/capacities of host governments to improve regulation of foreign-funded land deals. • Developing international frameworks to improve transparency in land deals.[34]
He found this focus was confirmed by a range of other documents reviewing address international efforts to promote responsible investment in agriculture and recommended the International Working Group paper[36] and Smaller & Mann.[37] The researcher mentions a report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development stating a ‘significant lack of concrete and verifiable’ empirically-based policy and legal work on the issue of foreign investment in agricultural land [34][38]
The researcher saw Smaller and Mann [39] note that in many host states like the UK ‘there is either no, or insufficient or unclear domestic law concerning land rights, water rights, pollution controls for intensive agriculture, human health, worker protection and so on.[34]
The researcher did find that international law framework provides hard rights for foreign investors with two primary sources of international law relating to this issue: international contracts, which are commercial in nature; and international treaty law on investment, with both bodies acting on a commercial perspective and focusing on economic interests of foreign investors, rather than social or environmental dimensions [34][40]
He discussed the UN’s Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights [41] which address the extraterritorial obligations of states over overseas business enterprises and finds the principles do not provide any detailed discussion of the UK case, or of timeframes and costs.[34]

The researcher studied a report by Global Witness, the Oakland Institute and the International Land Coalition which identifies four key entry points for improving transparency in large-scale land acquisition:[35] • transparent land and natural resource planning; • free, prior and ‘informed’ consent; • public disclosure of all contractual documentation; • multi-stakeholder initiatives, independent oversight and grievance mechanisms’ • a range of additional entry points for future policy work and campaigning, which includes addressing the ‘extra-territorial obligations of states over overseas business enterprises’.[34]
He found the report stresses that ‘further analysis is needed to identify the benefits and opportunities of each entry point, as well as potential limitations, challenges, and risks around future campaigns which would need to be addressed from the start’ and notes that as of early 2013 there is a gap between the extent to which individual states fulfil their obligations to regulate businesses overseas, and ‘the extent to which such regulations cover transparency and information disclosure’ [34][42]
The researcher found that the UN’s Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, written by the former UN Special Representative to the Secretary General for Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie [41] provide some discussion of how business enterprises need to undertake human rights due diligence suggesting that states ‘should set out clearly the expectation that all business enterprises domiciled in their territory and/or jurisdiction respect human rights throughout their operations’ and notes that ‘at present States are not generally required under international human rights law to regulate the extraterritorial activities of businesses domiciled in their territory and/or jurisdiction.[34]
He claims that they are not generally prohibited from doing so either, provided there is a recognised jurisdictional basis’ [43] and says the report notes that some states have introduced domestic measures with extraterritorial implications. ‘Examples include requirements on “parent” companies to report on the global operations of the entire enterprise; multilateral soft-law instruments such as the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; and performance standards required by institutions that support overseas investments.[34]
The researcher found other approaches amount to direct extraterritorial legislation and enforcement including criminal regimes that allow for prosecutions based on the nationality of the perpetrator no matter where the offence occurs’ [34][44]
He read that the UN’s Guiding Principles [41] propose that ‘contracts should always be publicly disclosed when the public interest is impacted; namely cases where the project presents either large-scale or significant social, economic, or environmental risks or opportunities, or involves the depletion of renewable or non-renewable natural resources’ [34][45]
He found Global Witness et al [35] state that governments and businesses often claim that confidentiality is necessarily to protect commercially sensitive information contained in investment contracts.[34]

The researcher states that the Global Witness et al paper[46] details a number of international instruments that ‘create obligations and responsibilities throughout all stages of decision-making around large-scale land investments’, including theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[34]
He found several thematic binding agreements also examined in the report: the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity and the 1994 Convention to Combat Desertification.[34]
The UK encourages companies to abide by OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises which provide voluntary principles and standards for responsible business conduct for multinational corporations operating in or from countries adhering to the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises, including detailed guidance concerning information disclosure.[47] However they do not, provide any specific recommendations on land.[34]
The researcher read the Global Witness et al [35] report also finds that ‘a number of instruments offer companies the opportunity to associate themselves with a set of principles or goals that demonstrate corporate social responsibility’ but most of these are largely ‘declarative’.[34]
Overall, he summaries that the report notes that although these various instruments ‘recognise secrecy and lack of access to information to be a problem, they give almost no detail as to how it should be tackled in practice, nor do any mandatory provisions yet exist to ensure such an implicit aspiration is met’ [34][48]

In a joint research project between the FAO, IIED, and IFAD, Cotula et al. found that the majority of host countries lacked basic data on the size, nature, and location of land acquisitions through land registries or other public sources, and that “researchers needed to make multiple contacts…to access even superficial and incomplete information.”[13] The World Bank’s own lack of land size information on over half of the reported land grabs that it researched points to the difficulties inherent in gaining access to and researching individual land acquisitions.[10]
The European project EJOLT (Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade) is building a global map of land grabbing, with the aim to make an interactive online map on this and many other environmental justice issue by 2013. The project also produces in-depth resources on land grabbing, such as this video on land grabbing in Ethiopia.

In Madagascar, the anger among the population about land sales led to violent protests. The South Korean corporation Daewoo was in the process of negotiations with the Malagasy government for the purchase of 1.3 million hectares, half of all agricultural land, to produce corn and palm oil. This investment, while one of many pursued in Madagascar, attracted considerable attention there and led to protests against the government.[49] While some civil society actors claim that the Daewoo investment led to the fall of the Malagasy government, these claims are unsubstantiated.
In South Sudan, numerous large-scale land acquisitions have taken place in spite of the country's unresolved political and security situation. One of the most prominent, involving a former AIG partner named Philippe Heilberg, garnered attention in Rolling Stone for his provocative pursuit of land in conflict-ridden regions. Heilberg, who is planning to invest in 800,000 ha of land in partnership with many of South Sudan's top generals and civilian officials, attracted criticism with his remarks (regarding Africa and land grabbing) that "the whole place is like one big mafia — and I'm like a mafia head."[50]

^Selby, A. (2009). Institutional Investment into Agricultural Activities: Potential Benefits and Pitfalls. Washington D.C.: Presented at the conference "Land Governance in support of the MDGs: responding to New Challenges," World Bank.

Michelle Obama Photo at Whitehouse

About Me

As Project Director for Confederation Council Foundation for Africa inc.,I Aim to provide platform open doors for development towards the emerging entrepreneurship agenda among New American Migrants. We provide sustainable settlement towards self-sufficiency. The Foundation under my leadership intends to fulfil Immigration Settlement Program and the Millenium Development Goals Strategic Plan of Action. Our Mission is to Network for start-up business, job creation for talented and skilled individuals, Business Investments Locally and Abroad. We involve simple Economic and Educational Networking and empowerment - partnering with Federal Government, the Civic Societies, Faith Based and Non-Profit project under One-Stop-Service plan. The purpose is to encourage more Women and Youth who are the engine of CHANGE towards achieving sustainable policy enactment & Socio/Economic DEMANDs in order to curtail growing influx of African migration which will eventually reduce unwarranted relocation and suffering of many people.